EI
Part of an ancient Egyptian king's unique sphinx was unveiled at a dig in northern Israel on Tuesday, with researchers struggling to understand just how the unexpected find ended up there.
The broken granite sphinx statue -- including the paws and some of the mythical creature's forearms -- displayed at Tel Hazor archaeological site in Israel's Galilee, is the first such find in the region.
Its discovery also marks the first time ever that researchers have found a statue dedicated to Egyptian ruler Mycerinus who ruled circa 2,500 B.C. and was builder of one of the three Giza pyramids, an expert said.
"This is the only monumental Egyptian statue ever found in the Levant - today's Israel, Lebanon, Syria," Amnon Ben-Tor, an archaeology professor at the Hebrew University in charge of the Tel Hazor dig, told AFP.
"It is also the only sphinx of this particular king known, not even in Egypt was a sphinx of that particular king found."
Ben-Tor said that besides Mycerinus's name, carved in hieroglyphics between the forearms, there are symbols reading "beloved by the divine souls of Heliopolis."
"This is the temple in which the sphinx was originally placed," Ben-Tor said of Heliopolis, an ancient city which lies north of today's Cairo.
Tel Hazor, which Ben-Tor calls "the most important archaeological site in this country," was the capital of southern Canaan, founded circa 2,700 BC and at its peak covering approximately 200 acres and home to some 20,000 Canaanites. It was destroyed in the 13th century BC.
"Following a gap of some 150 years, it was resettled in the 11th century BC by the Israelites, who continuously occupied it until 732 BC," when it was destroyed by the Asyrians, Ben-Tor said.
He said the find was approximately 50 centimetres long, and estimated the entire statue was 150 centimetres long and half a metres high."
How, when and why it reached Tel Hazor remains a mystery.
"That it arrived in the days of Mycerinus himself is unlikely, since there were absolutely no relations between Egypt and this part of the world then," said Ben-Tor. More
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